I hadn’t been out for teppanyaki for at least a decade, so when I heard there was a new chef at Saji-Ya on Grand Avenue in St. Paul, I thought it would be fun to go there with a friend.

It was fun, in a campy way. And the food was OK. Some of it was better than I remembered; some was utterly forgettable. But I couldn’t stop thinking about how much fun my kids would have there.

I started with a green tea hot toddy, which was bitter, sweet, sour and perfect on a frigid night. I’m a little obsessed with toddies right now, and I’ll be replicating that one at home.

We ordered a smattering of proteins — shrimp, scallops, steak and chicken — and let our chef get to work. Teppanyaki is Japanese cuisine, cooked in front of diners on a flat-top grill.

The meal started with a heaping portion of edamame from the kitchen, simply boiled and salted, and some chicken livers, seared and hit with a shot of teriyaki sauce (a recurrent theme in our meal, which made much of what we ate taste the same). The livers were salty, sweet and nicely caramelized.

The best entree protein we tried was mellow, succulent scallops. Plump, pink shrimp were good, too. A chicken breast was better than our steak, which was a little overcooked.

Our personal chef’s tired jokes (soy sauce is “Diet Coke” and teriyaki is “Japanese ketchup,” for instance) fell a little flat on two women approaching middle age, but I’m guessing the tableful of 20-somethings who walked in after us enjoyed the show.

And my kids and I definitely are returning, probably on a Tuesday night, when kids 12 and younger eat free when an adult purchases an entree. They’ll love the classic onion volcano (fire shoots out the top of a stack of onion rings) and watching the chef toss an egg in the air and balance it on his spatula.

Small Bites are first glances — not intended as definitive reviews — of new or changed restaurants. Jess Fleming can be reached at 651-228-5435. Follow her at twitter.com/jessflem.

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